NFL injury research and protecting players are her life

STORY UPDATED ON OCT. 17, 2024

When Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa went down in Week 3 with his third concussion in two years against the Buffalo Bills, Dolphins fans weren’t the only ones concerned. So was Taylor Langon, a 2016 graduate from Sacred Heart University.

You see, Langon, a longtime New York Giants fan, has a professional commitment to the young quarterback and all of the players on the NFL’s 32 teams. She is the first director of health and innovation for the NFL where she oversees the NFL-NCAA Research Consortium and other health and safety initiatives.

“In this role with the NFL, I don’t have direct interaction with the players,” Langon told the Fairfield County Business Journal. “I oversee our research and initiatives, partially for concussions, but then also for the knee, lower extremity soft tissues and sports science.”

Guardian caps

In her job, which she started in 2023 when the football league expanded its involvement with the NCAA’s research consortium, Langon has focused on the introduction of Guardian caps and the new kickoff rule.

“Both have been driven by data and innovation and the work of our engineers and our epidemiologists,” she said. “They put in so much work to help us make those decisions on using the NFL-mandated Guardian caps for helmets and the new kick off rules.”

The Guardian caps are soft-shell helmet covers designed to lessen the impact of hits to the players’ heads during plays. The cap can absorb at least 10% of the force of a hit, according to NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills, Langon’s boss. They are required by players during training camp but are exempt from wearing them if they select one of the six new helmet models that provide equal or better protection, according to the league and the NFL Players Association.

New kickoff rules

“For the new (dynamic) kick off rules, we are focusing on the injuries on that play: head contact rates, high speed collisions and injuries on that play,” Langon said. “Are they (injuries) up or are they down?”

The NFL describes the new rules as such:

• A “landing zone,” the area between the receiving team’s goal line and its 20-yard line, would prompt action off the kickoff if the ball were to land in that sector.
• Kickoffs will remain at the 35-yard line, but the remaining 10 players on the kicking unit will line up at the opposing team’s 40-yard line. The receiving team lines up with at least seven players in the “set-up zone,” a five-yard area between their own 35- and 30-yard lines, with a maximum of two returners lining up in the landing zone.
• After the ball is kicked, the kicker cannot cross the 50-yard line and the 10 kicking team players cannot move until the ball hits the ground or a player in the landing zone or goes into the end zone.

As of Week 5, 67.1% of kickoffs have resulted in touchbacks where the ball is placed at the 30-yard line if lands in the end zone and is not returned, according to league statistics. That compares to 73% in 2023.

“You will see more strategy for that play,” Langon said. “For the first time, last week (Week 3) we saw it returned for a TD. In past years, the kickoff was a dead play. Now we are seeing it a more active play.”

Working in corporate setting

As the first athletic trainer every hired by the league office, which is based on Park Avenue in Manhattan, Langon has had to acclimate to a corporate setting compared to courts, fields, and training rooms. And spends her time on research rather than on-the-field athletic training.

“That’s something I have had to get used to,” she said. “I have always worked in athletic settings. While the NFL is a big sports organization, at the end of the day it is a corporation. It’s interesting because it doesn’t align with the athletic training part of studies.”

Her job calls for her to educate the athlete about the repercussions of their risks on the field and following the proper protocol following an injury, specifically for concussions.

Her interest in concussions started long before she was hired by the NFL as she spent all of her post-graduate studies after Sacred Heart University working on their causes and treatments. That included her time at the University of Florida, where she earned a masters in physiology and kinesiology, her job at Virginia Tech Athletics as part of the NCAA-DoD CARE Consortium, and a position at University of Georgia as a researcher as part of NFL-NCAA Research Consortium.

“I originally got involved with studying concussions at Sacred Heart,” she said. “And from there I found concussions were different and they challenged me. It made the person to implement best practices. What we found then what we doing was not the best care for treating concussions.”

As director of health and innovation, Langon has worked with various league officials on initiatives geared toward player longevity and safety. That included the league’s first health safety conference in March, which included sports performance support staff from every NFL team.

Interest in athletic training

So, how did the Kingston, New York, resident get the bug to become an athletic trainer and study concussions?

“So, I have always been an avid sports fan,” she said. “It was one of those things. I have a passion for helping people. It was a way to combine those two things. I originally wanted to pursue a degree in physical therapy. But as I got more acclimated with athletic training and what an athletic trainer does, I decided I wanted to stick with it because of the opportunities it could offer.”

Coupled with her passion to provide a safe playing environment for all athletes in both the collegiate and professional levels and her curiosity with concussions, Langon decided to take the jump to the NFL from the University of Georgia last year.

“I always tell people there are few things in life that offer people a sense of community and sports being one of those,” she said. “If I can help make the sport safer and contribute to it as a whole, I believe it will be rewarding.”